Fitness challenges for all abilities

A fitness challenge can kick start a boring exercise schedule, give you renewed energy, improve your health and be extremely satisfying.   What’s more, if you do it with a friend or group then you will have the added benefit of mutual support and be more likely to complete it, especially if you are competitive like me!

Here are some ideas for fitness challenges which I have either done, or plan to do, and none require any specialist equipment and can be done from home.   I challenge you to start one next month – which one are you going to do?

1. Distance fitness challenge

This is very simple to do, and if you do it with a friend then you can motivate each other.   In December 2014 my friend Tori and I decided to run 1000km in 2015 (I’m not sure whose idea it was!) which to us was an incredibly tough target.  It’s an average of around 20km per week, and that’s EVERY SINGLE WEEK regardless of weather, illness, holidays or injury.   It was tough at times, dragging myself out to run when it was raining or freezing cold, but I managed to stay on schedule.

I have been using RunKeeper for many years to measure my runs and walks, both the distance and time, and it’s a great free app and you can link with friends to see their activities and congratulate them on their progress.  It also reminds you when you beat a previous personal best time, and gives handy insights into how often you are exercising and what your overall distance is (as I write, I have undertaken 1067 activities and travelled 3,735km!).   You can use it for walking, running and cycling, which is so useful even if you just want to find out the distance from your home to a particular place.

Although we were tracking our runs on RunKeeper anyway, we upgraded to the premium version just for the year as it allowed us to log the fitness challenge and then gave us updates for how we were doing.   You don’t have to do that though as the free version will track your distances and you can simply keep a note in a book or on a spreadsheet.

If you do log the fitness challenge in RunKeeper then you get this kind of reporting, to show how you are doing (I love a graph!).  For me it was great as I could see that I was slightly ahead of target, which gave me comfort as I knew if I got an injury and couldn’t train then I would hopefully catch up.

And so, finally, on December 20th with 11 days to spare we met up for a final 5km which took us over the 1000 mark!  Tori bought us medals to celebrate the achievement and presented me with a t-shirt to mark the occasion too!  She has since gone on to become a triathlete so it just goes to show what a challenge can lead to.

It was a great feeling!  But the point is that you can choose any distance, over any length of time.   Maybe 100km in a month?  Or maybe walk for 50km in a month?  You’ll be surprised how great you feel if you achieve it, and if you can do it with a friend then you’re much more likely to succeed.

If you are going to take up running then I’d strongly recommend going to a PROPER RUNNING SHOP (not Sports Direct!) to get fitted with running shoes.  I go to Alexandra Sports in Portsmouth but there are bound to be specialists in your local area.

2. Wall sits and planks

In March 2018 my friend Emma and I have embarked on a monthly fitness challenge which is really easy to fit into the day.  It doesn’t even involve leaving the house!  We are doing a wall sit and plank every day and trying to increase the time we can do each for.  It’s not a competition between us – we are trying to beat our own times – but seeing what somebody else can do certainly motivates you to go further next time.  I’m amazed how far we’ve come in such a short period; I’ve gone from a 45 second plank to over 3 minutes!  I’ve more than doubled my wall sit time too, in just three weeks!  These are great strength exercises and take less than six minutes so can easily be fitted in, even on the busiest day.

Here are my results and I think they are amazing! I feel so strong too and it’s great to be able to do them comfortably without struggling after a few seconds.

If you’re not sure how to do a plank then this YouTube video gives a demonstration.  There are many more variations if you want to take it up to the next level!

Wall sits look easy but are incredibly tough.  Watch this YouTube video to find out the perfect position.

I have set myself a target of a five minute wall sit and three minute plank, but who knows, I may even be able to do them for longer which would be amazing.

TOP TIP : put some music on while you’re doing these exercises, very loudly, your favourite songs, and sing at the top of your voice!  It’s very distracting and makes the time pass more quickly.  What I do for my plank is put on a song where I don’t know the lyrics, and then try and learn them (the joys of the internet makes finding lyrics very easy).   I’m currently learning We Didn’t Start The Fire by Billy Joel while I plank!

3. Number of steps per day

These days, many of us wear fitness trackers, but our phones can also measure the number of steps we take.   It is quite common to aim for 10,000 steps per day, but have you ever tried to do that for EVERY day in a month?   Or if you regularly exceed this then why not give yourself a 15,000 or 20,000 target?   It’s a lovely thing to do in the summer months when the days are long and the weather is nicer.  You get some fresh air, and can explore nice walking locations near your home.  I’m incredibly lucky to live near the sea but most of us live near a nice park or walking trail.  It’s also ideal for new mums, where you can take your baby out in the pram and get some exercise at the same time.   Anyone can do it and you can set a target to match your own ability.

If you have an iPhone then you can check the number of steps you’ve done in a day by opening the health app to get a summary, like the one below.

If you then tap on ‘Steps’ then you can see how many you’ve done in the last day, week, month and year.  Here is my record for March so far :

Having an Apple watch or similar tracker means you can track all of your activities and see how  you are improving over time.  I also love having different watch faces and programming different photos into it!  

4. 21 day fitness challenge

Chelsie Padley, a local fitness trainer, launched a Santa Shred health and fitness challenge in December 2017 to encourage us to avoid piling on the pounds before Christmas.  It was great as it focused on nutrition as well as exercise, but she gave us a list of exercises to do at home every day.   Chelsie’s list is below, but you can make up your own list and try to do more each day.  Start slowly and then build up the repetitions – you’ll be surprised how much you can improve in just a month!

5. Cooper Run

A Cooper Run is an ideal fitness challenge and is something I will be trying in a couple of months and it is to see how far you can run in 12 minutes.

It was designed by Kenneth H Cooper in 1968 for the US Military to test the condition of the soldiers.   You should run at a steady pace rather than intervals of faster and slower running.

I plan to use RunKeeper to track a run every day, and see how much I can improve my pace and get further each time.

6. Increase reps daily

My wall-sitting partner Emma devised this challenge for herself in January and it is to do the day number x 2 of press-ups.  You could also add squats and crunches to do a whole-body programme.

So on the 1st of the month you would do 2 press-ups, 2 squats and 2 crunches (easy!).

On the 2nd you’d do 4 of each.

And so on, up to a maximum of 62!

It is easy to do this at home and is great for a beginner as you can build up really slowly.  It doesn’t take up much time and you could get the whole family to join you!

6. Fastest 1km

This is also something I plan to do later in the year.   Not only is it a great challenge but it will hopefully improve my overall pace so that if I try for a personal best then I stand more chance of achieving it.

Using RunKeeper I will time the first or last kilometre of a normal run, and then try and make that as fast as possible.  My average time for 1 km is around 6 minutes, so I will aim to do a single one in around 5 minutes which I think is a great challenge.   Obviously you can go at your own pace, but try for a ‘best ever’ kilometre.

7. Close the rings

I have an Apple watch and it sets targets which I’m supposed to achieve every day which consists of the number of hours I stand, the minutes I exercise and the calories I burn.  The targets are measured using coloured rings and a great challenge is to close the rings on every day of a month.   If you have a Fitbit or other tracker then you can set similar targets and try to achieve them for a set period of time.

Here are my rings for March so far – as you can see I don’t always get very near to closing them!

I hope this has given you plenty of ideas for a fitness challenge which you can fit into your daily life and you are now planning a challenge for next month.   I would strongly recommend enlisting a friend or two to do it with you and then you can provide mutual support and achieve your targets.  I have a naturally competitive nature so end up going much further when I have someone else to inspire me.   Good luck!

If you have ideas for another fitness challenge then I’d love to hear them.  Leave a comment below, or contact me using the social media links at the top of the page.

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